firehose

The Princess and the Frog - Concept Art

photo via hat*im*3

Kotaku has posted a delightful photo gallery of large scale rice straw sculptures from Japan’s straw art festivals. The festivals are an annual fall tradition in rural Japan, particularly the Kagawa and Niigata prefectures.

photo via Honzu

photo via kyo

photo via hat*im*3

via Kotaku

mialayla:

mialayla:

I love my job

I lost my job

Just three months after expanding into a brick-and-mortar space on N. Mississippi, the Honey Pot Bakery has abruptly shuttered both its bakery and its food cart location, in SE Belmont's Good Food Here pod. Co-owner Kelly Delaney, who joined the Honey Pot team during the expansion, confirmed the closure in a statement:

The Honey Pot Bakery has closed its doors at the bakery and cart effective today. We have loved serving our customers and their shared passion for pie! We were so fortunate to give it a go, but in the end the business wasn't viable going forward. We chose to close our doors while we could still fulfill any obligations to our fellow small business owners. Thank you for your support.

The Honey Pot originally launched in Bend, moving to Portland in spring 2012 with baker , Mary Casanave Sheridan at the helm. A Facebook message describes the closure as "devastating" but provides no further details, other than "I hope to return one day soon in some form and continue to share my passion and vision with all of you."
· Honey Pot Bakery [Official site]
· All Previous Honey Pot Coverage [Eater PDX]

Photo of the Honey Pot courtesy Avila/EPDX

Things in mainstream superhero comics can get better for women and minorities, as this Atlantic profile of Marvel Comics writer Kelly Sue DeConnick attests. Marvel is trying, slowly, to bring more female characters to the forefront.

"I think that the message is that no one is 'other,' that white males are not the 'default human being,'" DeConnick said on Comic Con's final day, crystallizing her credo.

I think the glaring overabundance of white dudes on their movie slate is causing Marvel some embarrassment as they move more and more into the public eye. (It probably helps that strong female character advocate Joss Whedon is spearheading their movie universe, too.) Whatever the behind-the-scenes reasons, I'm glad they're pushing for a broader, more inclusive array of superheroes.

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detectiverabbit:

sorceressofwildwood:

bloodandthunderp:

twintrolldevon:

brokenponycutiemark:

celticdreamz:

Icelandic descendants of Vikings singing a hymn in a German train station. They totally need to be on the next Thor soundtrack.

Oh man oh man oh man. 6 guys, and it FILLS THE SPACE. Luck of the architecture - and they know how to pull it off. Nothing is easy making vocal music in a space not built for it. I want to do this kind of thing - randomly perform multipart harmony in public spaces.

And it reminds me of Bjork: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiN_YTyaNtI

My god this is beautiful.

Oh my god, the bass voice is superb.

This makes me feel so many things. Gods, it’s gorgeous and so evocative and wow. I need to find out what hymn this is.

cried

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

mooooosetache:

deadlydinos:

depression-party:

laughed too hard at this

The Australian Apocalypse begins

the difference between a koala and a drop bear

RUN FOR YOUR LIFE TINY KOALA

queennubian:

Ozzy knows about that life

The Cast AR Kickstarter project coming from two ex-Valve employees reached its $400,000 goal today, after just two days of being open to backers. Cast AR is a pair of augmented reality glasses that project graphics into the real world for multiple players to interact with.

Technical Illusions, the duo of Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson, were granted permission to continue the project after being let go by Valve alongside other hardware developers in February. The team set up a few stretch goals to continue funding the glasses after its initial goal: $600,000 will enable the developers to include a "customizable dungeon tile mapper" and reaching the $800,000 mark will add a microphone to the headset. There's plenty of time to reach these stretch goals; the funding campaign will conclude on November 14.

Cast AR augmented reality glasses haul in $400K in two days originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 16 Oct 2013 13:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Artist and researcher Nickolay Lamm has created a series of photos that illustrate how cats see the world compared to how people do. The top photo of each pair shows what humans see, the bottom is an estimate of what cats see. Lamm consulted with eye specialists at the University of Pennsylvania veterinary school and learned that cats have a wider field of view, can’t see well at a distance, have much better night vision, and can see blue and yellow colors, but not reds and oranges. For more photos and information on how cats see the world, head over to Lamm’s article.

images via Nickolay Lamm

Something has gone terribly wrong in this most progressive of American cities.

This is the funniest thing you will watch all day. Guaranteed.

Read more...

The program outlined in this Miami Herald story by Alex Leary makes me feel so disheartened about the country:

As the battle over the healthcare law grinds on — Republicans no closer to victory than when they forced the government shutdown — a different fight was rising on a recent Saturday from inside Sharkey’s, a bar near the campus of Virginia Tech, 260 miles away.

Lured by free beer, gift cards and the chance to win an iPad, 100 students heard a pitch from the young staffers of a group named Generation Opportunity: Obamacare is a bad deal, and you should opt out.

Generation Opportunity is funded in part by the Koch brothers. The thinking is that if enough young people don't sign up for healthcare, Obamacare will fail. And what happens when one of these kids gets into a car wreck, or suffers from a catastrophic illness? Will the Koch brothers be there to pick up the hospital tab? No, of course not. That's the job of everyone who pays for health insurance, apparently. This is maybe the evilest thing the Kochs have done in their long, evil careers as kingmakers.

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Emily Yoffe aka Slate advice columnist “Prudence” is a rape denialist. We’ve known this for years because she repeatedly denies clear instance of rape in her advice column, in which she repeatedly and irresponsibly applies a blanket policy of rape apologia regardless of her letter writers’ circumstance. But until she published this morning’s rape denialism manifesto on Slate, lamenting that a “misplaced fear of blaming the victim has made it somehow unacceptable” to warn women of the dangers of drinking, we didn’t know just how bad it actually was. 

It’s hard to know where to start with this terrible and dangerous column (which we will *not* be linking to), so I’ll start where Yoffe does. Bemoaning “one awful high-profile case after another” in which  a young woman “ends up being raped” after drinking, Yoffe  seems to feel as if she is breaking through some kind of political correctness taboo by letting the women of the world know that “when they render themselves defenseless, terrible things can be done to them”.

Unfortunately, blaming women for their own rapes is the oldest, most pernicious trick in the book. It’s not new or edgy, though in this case it almost certainly made for a clicky and profitable #slatepitch.

“A common denominator in these cases is alcohol,” she writes conclusively, as if the existence of actual rapists is besides the point.

Frankly, I’m tired of spilling ink over this. Alexandra wrote a definitive takedown of this kind of rape denialism here, which documents Yoffe’s long history of rape denialism (with backing by Slate):

Your approach to alcohol and rape, however, has never been too concerned with details or variability between situations. Instead, you’ve been content to apply a blanket policy of rape apologia regardless of circumstance. This is the fourth letter in 12 months you’ve answered about a woman deeply affected by unremembered intercourse, and the third time you’ve insisted that such acts constitute an irresponsible drinker’s comeuppance or a fun, harmless night (a la Knocked Up, which you imply in your most recent rep column is representative of drunk sex generally)—but almost never rape.”

As examples, she cites cases in which Yoffe: discourages pressing charges against a man the writer believes raped her while she was drunk because “trying to ruin someone else’s life is a poor way to address one’s alcohol and self-control problems”; laughs off a woman who had been raped by her husband as “prim, punctilious, punitive” because her story doesn’t sound like a Law & Order plot; and, unsurprisingly, talks extensively about how women set themselves up for assault by drinking, to name a few.

As Alexandra wrote, doubting a given account doesn’t automatically make one a rape denialist, but a consistent track record of dismissing alleged assaults because the victims were drunk does. Alexandra concludes, and after this latest manifesto it’s hard to argue the point, that Yoffe “betrays all survivors” with her flippant attitude and hyper focus on women’s behavior rather than that of their rapists. 

Perhaps more than Yoffe herself, I’m disgusted at Slate editors for playing host to this vile line of thought, so commonly debunked for years, by feminists of many stripes. This is not journalism. This is not a new, provocative, or worthwhile argument. This is plain old victim-blaming. We’ve said it before and we’ll keep saying it: rape is the fault of rapists, and no one else. Your shoddy attempts to say otherwise, however couched in faux-concern for women, debase and blame survivors of sexual assault and women everywhere and lend credence to criminals.

Lori Adelman is an Executive Director of Feministing in charge of Partnerships & Outreach. She has never before used “#slatepitch” in a sentence, and hopes to never do so again. 

 

 

Original Source

Next-gen kicks off this November. That means there are a ton of developers out there busting their butts off to get launch games out on time—and Ryse: Son of Rome, an Xbox One exclusive developed by Crytek, is no different. Today, the Ryse Twitter account boasted about feeding the developers working on the game through "crunch"—a term that refers to the practice of working long, sometimes grueling hours to ship a product.

dryriver writes "The Guardian reports: 'British Prime Minister David Cameron has encouraged a Commons select committee to investigate whether the Guardian has broken the law or damaged national security by publishing secrets leaked by the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. He made his proposal in response to a question from former defense secretary Liam Fox, saying the Guardian had been guilty of double standards for exposing the scandal of phone hacking by newspapers and yet had gone on to publish secrets from the NSA taken by Snowden. Speaking at prime minister's questions on Wednesday, Cameron said: "The plain fact is that what has happened has damaged national security and in many ways the Guardian themselves admitted that when they agreed, when asked politely by my national security adviser and cabinet secretary to destroy the files they had, they went ahead and destroyed those files. So they know that what they're dealing with is dangerous for national security."'" Destroyed their copies of some files, certainly, but it's not like others don't have the files too.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

90s90s90s:

 

Sad news for Passion Pit fans: They have cancelled their upcoming Portland show, scheduled for this Saturday, October 19 at the Moda Center's Theater of the Clouds.

Here is the official statement:

This Saturday's scheduled Passion Pit show in Portland is cancelled due to scheduling conflicts beyond the band's control. Refunds at point of purchase.

The timing of this show cancellation is... ironic? That's not the word. Coincidental? Strange? Whatever. What I mean is that Passion Pit just turned the internet upside-down last week by posting a weirdly patronizing letter that explained why cancelling shows really, really sucks. According to this missive, the Portland show's cancellation dings in at Number 4 on their "Reasons Why We Cancel Our Shows, Which We Seem to Do Quite a Lot" List:

4) Conflicting schedules. There are many things that happen on the road that are scheduled that are not made public because it is no one’s business. Clearly, it must be something serious enough to merit losing money to clear a show. We do not take this lightly and because we all have private lives, certain things are unavoidable and some people will simply be left with a statement that doesn’t fully satisfy. We’re sorry, but we are entitled to our privacy to a certain degree. This is one of the most frustrating things that you cannot always predict, which brings us to my final point.

And so on and so on. What's weird is that as recently as October 9, the band insisted: "No shows on our current tour are up for any type of cancellation at this current juncture."

Our sincere wishes for Passion Pit to get over whatever has caused this schedule conflict—which is none of our business, see—and our condolences go out to ticket-buying fans. The show has already been removed from the Rose Quarter's website. An ad for the show will appear in tomorrow's Mercury, but be assured, it is canceled. No word on whether other dates on their tour have been cancelled, but I'm guessing yes.

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Unpaid Intern Is Ruled Not an "€˜Employee,"€™ Not Protected From Sexual Harassment:

timemachineyeah:

stfusexists:

incisiveredneck:

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York found that because Wang was an unpaid intern, not an employee, she could not bring a claim under the New York City Human Rights Law. This discrepancy’s not new: Unpaid interns aren’t covered by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and while local laws can protect them, New York’s state and city laws do not.

Well no wonder employers fucking love unpaid internships so much. Not only do interns have no expectation of pay, but they have no expectation of basic rights either.

WOW. I cannot wait for this shit to go to the Supreme Court so the unpaid internship can die and be consigned to the annals of history forever. 

Unpaid internships SHOULDN’T EXIST. 

And I say this as someone who had a great one that she was well treated at and loved. They set up a BAD SYSTEM. 

Moet Hennessey Louis Vuitton LVMH reported sales for its third quarter yesterday (Oct. 15), and guess what—they weren’t great. Sales growth for the company’s floundering fashion and leather (aka handbags) division quarter slowed to 4% for the first nine months of 2013 over the same period in 2012.

It’s been a perplexing year for the high end retail company, whose shares have risen only marginally higher since the start of 2013, while competitors like Cartier, Richemont, Burberry and Gucci parent company Kering have all seen their shares jump by more than 20%. For two decades, the Louis Vuitton brand, which accounts for roughly 50% of the company’s sales, has been able to all but pencil in sales growth above 10% (though sometimes nearer to 20%), but for 2013 the expectation is currently somewhere between 5% to 6% growth, which itself may even be overly optimistic.

What gives? Louis Vuitton may be flaunting its famous monogram a bit too much.

The classic logo that it used to quickly establish itself in emerging markets around the world appears to have run its course. The company’s handbags and other leather goods are so ubiquitous today that they have begun to symbolize “accessible luxury” rather than “exclusive” luxury. The problem, however, is that Louis Vuitton doesn’t sell like an accessible, or affordable luxury brand; its handbags, for one, are far more expensive than the likes of Coach or Michael Kors. “Accessible luxury for more money” isn’t exactly the sort of slogan a company wants to swing around.

While Louis Vuitton has addressed the shift in consumer demand by announcing its plans to reduce the visibility of its monogrammed luxury items, overcoming its reliance on logo-ed goods won’t be easy—roughly two-thirds of Louis Vuitton’s product offerings still carry the company’s logo.

Compounding the problem is the fact that Asia and the Far East comprise the company’s largest market, accounting for nearly a third of its business. “At this point in time, we miss demand from the Asian part of the world,” the company’s CFO, Jean-Jacques Guiony, said in a conference call earlier this year. While that’s partly to do with falling demand for luxury goods due to slowing Chinese growth and a crackdown on corruption, it’s also a nod to the region’s changing tastes. New, discerning buyers in China’s biggest cities are curbing demand for loud, logo-bespattered brands like Louis Vuitton in favor of other, more subtle luxury brands like, say, Prada—not least because they don’t attract so much attention in an anti-corruption drive.

There are also just too many LV tattooed bags out there. The difference, as we pointed out after Louis Vuitton disappointed earlier this year, is novelty.

So far, the company’s solution has been more price-raising than logo-cutting in an attempt to boost its image as an exclusive brand. While one of Louis Vuitton’s best performing products, its Capucine leather bags, are indeed a lot more expensive than, say, its best-known canvas bags, it’s probably little coincidence that the LV monogram on them is much less obtrusive.

sfcrazy writes "Glenn Greenwald, the thorn in the proverbial back of NSA and its colonial cousin GCHQ, is leaving the Guardian to start his own news organization. Greenwald said 'My partnership with the Guardian has been extremely fruitful and fulfilling: I have high regard for the editors and journalists with whom I worked and am incredibly proud of what we achieved. The decision to leave was not an easy one, but I was presented with a once-in-a-career dream journalistic opportunity that no journalist could possibly decline. Because this news leaked before we were prepared to announce it, I'm not yet able to provide any details of this momentous new venture, but it will be unveiled very shortly.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Divers working in Lake Chebarkul in central Russia have pulled up a 1,255 lb. (570 kg) chunk of rock they suspect is the meteorite that wreaked havocabove Chelyabinsk earlier this year. But as they were putting it on the scale, it collapsed into three different pieces.

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Mondo will kick off their new Marvel license with this beautiful Silver Surfer art print from Kilian Eng. It’s a 24″ x 36″ screenprint, has an edition of 275, and will cost $50. It goes up today (Thursday, October 10th) at a random time. Visit Mondotees.com.

Click the image to see it larger: